Over NINE YEARS (with an interruption) and ELEVEN HUNDRED POSTS!

When I posted PANCAKES IN PARIS: Living the American Dream in France to my blog, it was my 1,100th post (not review...post)! I started blogging again (Geocities, *sob*) because I was unnerved by the Amazon data defilement in 2009 (snatching paid-for content off Kindles without warning or compensation) then their purchase of Goodreads in 2013 hard on the heels of losing dozens of my reviews to their bizarre "off-topic" review bullshit...go here and/or here if you want to know more about that!...made me think it was time to have *another* public-facing place to put my reviews.

Now, that event was followed by my complete and utter collapse in 2014. Six months in the goofy garage, reading James Rollins books and doing nothing but thinking, followed by moving into an assisted living facility and getting accustomed to the systems in place to enable the destitute to live...well, no posts from October 2014 to January 2016 suddenly makes sense, no? It was a difficult adjustment. It's been quite a shock to try to accomplish things and meet with disparagement, obstacles, and contempt! But, at the same time, the people who survived this unintentional purge of my life-list of friends made themselves a devout disciple.

In the nine and a quarter years since I started the public-facing book-reviewing practice here, I've had 451,000 unique views and accrued a high of almost 3,000 email subscribers as well as 1,200 Feedly followers. It's not The New York Review of Books, but it's not too terrible and all I do is talk about books I've read. Once in a way an essay...that first link is to the essay that was my first post that got over 1,000 views. No affiliate links because 1) ew and b) I can't afford to make money lest some jackass run report me to the DSS for exceeding my allowed income for a disabled person. (Yes, it's happened more than once and it was indeed someone from real life not my "parasocial relationships." *snort*) So it's really just me talking about books that, almost a half-million times, others have made the effort to find me or to go to my blog via a link and read what I've said.

I hope to post at least 1,100 more times and amuse and entertain and illuminate more books for all y'all. My sweet Young Gentleman Caller, when he called to say "congratulations", was very complimentary about the work I've done. He was kind enough to say he thinks I'm good at the job, and it's a job in the sense that it absorbs my energy, my thoughts and my time, so he's unsurprised that so many read my work. Really though, he said it best and most sweetly when he was getting back to his own work: "Everybody loves a curmudgeon. Especially when he's really a truffle."

The two latest trolls on Goodreads pissed me off, so here's my response

A good critic is trying to tell you what she has learned about herself from the reading of a particular piece of literature. A bad reviewer is often trying to tell you how smart he is by declaring whether or not he liked a particular book. If he liked the book, then this is the kind of book a superior person likes, and vice versa. He might try to explain why he didn’t like it, but the review is really just a tautology. “I didn’t like this book because it is bad,” is equivalent to “This book is bad because I didn’t like it.”
Kevin Guilfoyle, The Tournament of Books 2014

So this is something I found at the Tournament of Books site, and with which I agree completely. I've had a lot of private and public snark on several fora about the fact that I write reader-response reviews. "Who cares" is the general tenor of these snorts of derision, with an undercurrent of "how dare you" for additional smugness.

Here's the thing: I don't much care if you liked a book or not. That's nice, either way, ohhh mmmm ah-hah. So? I like BLTs. So you go out and get yourself a BLT because Richard said he liked them. It's a soggy mess, with undercooked bacon and watery tomatoes and limp, wilted iceberg lettuce on untoasted white bread. "Ick ptui," you say, "that Richard steered me wrong! I'll never trust his recommendations again."

And you'd be right.

I **love** crispy bacon. When you put crispy, just-on-the-edge-of-burned bacon on a toasted piece of seeded rye bread, and add fresh, home-grown Green Zebra tomatoes that have been slightly salted to accent their sweetness...well, the only thing that makes it better is an inner leaf of butter lettuce, one of the yellowy ones with a crunchy-thick rib and that snap-in-the-tooth texture. Being a fat-o-holic, I need mayo on my bread, but honestly who would be a stickler and whine about the lack with these ingredients?

And please, oh please, give me a good bock beer, a Dos XX or a Shiner, cold cold cold, so I can sluice my mouth clean with carbonated richness! Could any sandwich anywhere ever say "summer" more loudly than this?

Now you hate the sound of that because you're some sort of stupid veggie nutball, or you're a religious nut who won't eat pigmeat, or maybe beer makes you cringe. Maybe you don't like tomatoes. But what you are not is in any doubt about what I'm saying I like. Based on your take on the elements presented, you have a clear picture of whether I'm speakin' your language or I might as well be speaking in tongues.

That's what I'm trying to get across, both positively and negatively, in my reviews. If you disagree with me, fine. But I don't care. It's not important to me that you "validate" me with praise each and every time I utter a pronunciamento, as more than one of the arrogant assholes who've publicly or privately told me to belt up have said.

If you don't like what I've written, go on about your day. I don't care to know why, or that, you are Offended or Bored or Contemptuous. Go feel your feelings the way you feel your bits: Privately.